▲ LG Rollable Smartphone

Last month, LG presented an 8-second short video of a rollable smartphone in CES 2021, which is the world's largest IT exhibition. The screen of the rollable smartphone can be rolled up and can be unrolled. The size of the smartphone is 6.8 inches in usual and can be stretched to 7.4 inches. It was possible to check that it can be stretched automatically with one touch, unlike existing foldable smartphones which need to exert strength to open. This concept received favorable notice in the press.

However, LG announced that they will reconsider smartphone business on the score of years of losses of the mobile department. About this announcement, experts are expecting that LG could discard this plan about a rollable smartphone. LG requested China manufacturers including BOE to postpone the project to develop a rollable smartphone. LG mentioned that they are still processing the project, but they do not have a detailed future plan for it. LG mobile industry recorded a deficit since the second quarter, in the year 2015, and a business loss of five trillion won last year. According to Counterpoint Research, LG released 24.7 million smartphones which are 13percent decreased record than the previous year. For this reason, many analysts are forecasting that LG would stop or downsize the mobile business, and it would be related to the rollable smartphones.

▲ LG wing

LG had launched LG Wing as a part of the explorer project but failed. It received attention as a variant form factor, but it only reached a sales volume of 100 thousand.

There are expectations that there will be a prospect of failure and technical difficulty to LG's rollable smartphone.

Feb. 23, 2021

by Kim Yerin